The work of the 44-year-old Vienna-based artist was chosen from more than 800 international submissions for the £20,000 award, which has been described as “Ireland’s Turner Prize”.

The award, which is funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Tourism NI and Belfast City Council, is Ireland’s largest art prize and one of the most substantial in the UK.

The shortlist of 13 included artists from Ireland, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, Canada, USA, Palestine, Austria, France and Turkey. The artists worked across a range of mediums including photography, film, installation, sculpture and drawing.

Over the last few months Israel has been transferring material to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which is examining whether war crimes were committed in the Gaza Strip. According to defense sources, the material relates to events that took place during Operation Protective Edge, the 2014 Israel-Gaza war. The ICC is also looking into the demonstrations along the Gaza border fence that began on March 30.In the past, Israel sharply criticized the court, saying that it had no authority to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, there is concern in the political and military echelons that the court will open a criminal investigation into Israel’s actions in the Strip, a process that could lead to a wave of lawsuits against those involved and even to their arrest abroad.>>Rising terrorism in West Bank overshadows optimism around Gaza-Israel deal | Analysis In the last few months, diplomatic, military and legal officials have held discussions, some of them attended by the prime minister, to prepare for the court’s initial findings regarding the 2014 Gaza war. Toward that end, Israel has begun using third parties to transfer documents to the court that could bolster its stance and influence the examination team, which until now has been exposed mainly to the evidence presented by the Palestinian side.

Demonstration near the Gaza border, November 9, 2018. Adel Hana/APMilitary advocate general Maj. Gen. Sharon Afek has presented material regarding Israel’s response to the demonstrations in Gaza, but defense sources say these have been for internal use only and have not been passed on to the ICC or to any other body.Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletterEmail* Sign up

The sources say Israel has made a distinction between the two subjects of the court’s examination: While Israel is not cooperating with the ICC on its probe of incidents at the Gaza fence, it is already holding indirect discussions with the court over Operation Protective Edge.

Last April the ICC’s chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda said that violence against civilians could be considered an international crime, as might the use of civilians as a cover for military operations. She added that the situation in Palestine was under investigation. She warned that the court was following events in Gaza, and emphasized that guidelines for opening fire at demonstrators could be considered a crime under international law.

Public Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, August 28, 2017. Bas Czerwinski/Pool via REUTERSOfficials told Haaretz that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to postpone the evacuation of the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar came after Israel realized that such a move could influence Bensouda, who said she would not hesitate to use her authority with regard to the village. Last month, Bensouda said she was watching with concern the plan to evacuate the West Bank Bedouin community and that a forced evacuation would lead to violence, adding that the needless destruction of property and transfer of populations in occupied territories are a war crime, based on the Treaty of Rome. She linked the planned evacuation to events in Gaza, saying she was concerned by the ongoing violence for which both sides are responsible.

FILE Photo: The West Bank village of Khan al-Ahmar, September 25, 2018. Emil Salman

t is said that the hardest thing you can do with a violin is play Paganini.

But for Palestine’s foremost luthier, fixing instruments in refugee camps and using music to bring people together in a divided region comes a close second.

Shehada Shalalda, 28, is thought to be the only professional sanie kaman, or violin maker, in Palestine. The other luthiers in Palestine specialise in Arab instruments.

Thirteen years ago he was an unremarkable high school student growing up in the old quarter of Ramallah when he heard the aching strains of a single violin wafting up from a newly-opened music school. He was mesmerised and in that moment his life changed.

I would like to express my deep gratitude to the Kalimat Palestinian Literature Festival, Mahmoud Muna in particular, and to the Kenyon Institute of the British Council for inviting me and undertaking the expense for me to participate in this year’s literature festival in Palestine.

As you all know by now, Israeli authorities have denied me entry into my country and I am therefore unable to attend the festival. It pains me greatly not to be with my friends and fellow writers to explore and celebrate our literary traditions with readers and with each other in our homeland. It pains me that we can meet anywhere in the world except in Palestine, the place to which we belong, from whence our stories emerge and where all our turns eventually lead. We cannot meet on soil that has been fertilized for millennia by the bodies of our ancestors and watered by the tears and blood of Palestine’s sons and daughters who daily fight for her.

Since my deportation, I read that Israeli authorities indicated that I was required to “coordinate” my travel with them in advance. This is a lie. In fact, I was told upon arrival at the airport that I had been required to apply for a visa to my US passport, and that this application would not be accepted until 2020, at least five years after the first time they denied me entry. They said it was my responsibility to know this even though I was never given any indication of being banned. Then they said my first deportation in 2015 was because I refused to give them the reason for my visit. This, too, is a lie. Here are the facts:

In 2015, I traveled to Palestine to build playgrounds in several villages and to hold opening ceremonies at playgrounds we had already built in the months previous. Another member of our organization was traveling with me. She happened to be Jewish and they allowed her in. Several Israeli interrogators asked me the same questions in different ways over the course of approximately 7.5 hours. I answered them all, as Palestinians must if we are to stand a chance of going home, even as visitors. But I was not sufficiently deferential, nor was I capable of that in the moment. But I was certainly composed and – the requirement for all violated people – “civil.” Finally, I was accused of not cooperating because I did not know how many cousins I have and what are all their names and the names of their spouses. It was only after being told that I was denied entry that I raised my voice and refused to leave quietly. I did yell, and I stand by everything I yelled. According to Haaretz, Israel said I “behaved angrily, crudely and vulgarly” in 2015 at the Allenby Bridge.

What I said in 2015 to my interrogators, and which was also reported in Haaretz at the time, is that they should be the ones to leave, not me; that I am a daughter of this land and nothing will change that; that my own direct history is steeped in the land and there’s no way they can extricate it; that as much as they invoke Zionist mythological fairy tales, they can never claim such personal familial lineage, much as they wish they could.

I suppose that must sound vulgar to Zionist ears. To be confronted with authenticity of Palestinian indigeneity despite exile, and face their apocryphal, ever-shifting colonial narratives.

My lack of deference in 2015 and choice not to quietly accept the arbitrary decision of an illegitimate gatekeeper to my country apparently got appended to my name and, upon my arrival this time on November 1st, signaled for my immediate deportation.

The true vulgarity is that several million Europeans and other foreigners live in Palestine now while the indigenous population lives either in exile or under the cruel boots of Israeli occupation; the true vulgarity is in the rows of snipers surrounding Gaza, taking careful aim and shooting human beings with no real way to defend themselves, who dare to protest their collective imprisonment and imposed misery; the true vulgarity is in seeing our youth bleed on the ground, waste in Israeli jails, starve for an education, travel, learning, or some opportunity to fully be in the world; The true vulgarity is the way they have taken and continue to take everything from us, how they have carved out our hearts, stolen our everything, occupied our history, and tamp our voices and our art.

In total, Israel detained me for approximately 36 hours. We were not allowed any electronics, pens or pencils in the jail cells, but I found a way to take both – because we Palestinians are resourceful, smart, and we find our way to freedom and dignity by any means we can. I have photos and video from inside that terrible detention center, which I took with a second phone hidden on my body, and I left for them a few messages on the walls by the dirty bed I had to lay on. I suppose they will find it vulgar to read: “Free Palestine,” “Israel is an Apartheid State,” or “susan abulhawa was here and smuggled this pencil into her prison cell”.

But the most memorable part of this ordeal were the books. I had two books in my carry-on when I arrived at the jail and I was allowed to keep them. I alternated reading from each, sleeping, thinking.

The first book was a highly researched text by historian Nur Masalha, “Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History.” I was scheduled to interview Nur on stage about his epic audit of Palestinian millennia-old history, told not from the politically motivated narratives, but from archeological and other forensic narratives. It is a people’s history, spanning the untidy and multilayered identities of Palestine’s indigenous populations from the Bronze Age until today. In an Israeli detention cell, with five other women – all of them Eastern European, and each of them in her own private pain, the chapters of Nur Masalha’s book took me through Palestine’s pluralistic, multicultural and multi-religious past, distorted and essentialized by modern inventions of an ancient past.

The bitter irony of our condition was not lost on me. I, a daughter of the land, of a family rooted at least 900 years in the land, and who spent much of her childhood in Jerusalem, was being deported from her homeland by the sons and daughters of recent arrivals, who came to Palestine a mere decades ago with European-born ethos of racial Darwinism, invoking biblical fairy tales and divinely ordained entitlement..

It occurred to me, too, that all Palestinians – regardless of our conditions, ideologies, or the places of our imprisonment or exile – are forever bound together in a common history that begins with us and travels to the ancient past to one place on earth, like the many leaves and branches of a tree that lead to one trunk. And we are also bound together by the collective pain of watching people from all over the world colonize not only the physical space of our existence, but the spiritual, familial, and cultural arenas of our existence. I think we also find power in this unending, unhealed wound. We write our stories from it. Sing our songs and dabke there, too. We make art from these aches. We pick up rifles and pens, cameras and paint brushes in this space, throw stones, fly kites and flash victory and power fists there.

The other book I read was Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed, spellbinding novel, “The Underground Railroad.” It is the story of Cora, a girl born into slavery to Mabel, the first escaped slave from the Randal Plantation. In this fictional account, Cora escapes the plantation with her friend Ceasar their determined slave catcher, Ridgeway on their trail in the Underground Railroad – a real-life metaphor made into an actual railroad in the novel. The generational trauma of inconceivable bondage is all the more devastating in this novel because it is told matter-of-factly from the vantage of the enslaved. Another people’s collective unhealed wound laid bare, an excruciatingly powerful common past, a place of their power too, a source of their stories and their songs.

I am back in my house now, with my daughter and our beloved dogs and cats, but my heart doesn’t ever leave Palestine. So, I am there, and we will continue to meet each other in the landscapes of our literature, art, cuisine and all the riches of our shared culture.

After writing this statement, I learned that the press conference is being held at Dar el Tifl. I lived the best years of my childhood there, despite my separation from family and the sometimes difficult conditions we faced living under Israeli occupation. Dar el Tifl is the legacy of one of the most admirable women I have ever known – Sitt Hind el Husseini. She saved me in more ways than I suppose she knew, or that I understood at the time. She saved a lot of us girls. She gave gathered us from all the broken bits of Palestine. She gave us food and shelter, educated and believed in us, and in turn made us believe we were worthy. There is no more appropriate place than Dar el Tift to read this statement.

I want to leave you with one more thought I had in that jail cell, and it is this: Israel is spiritually, emotionally, and culturally small despite the large guns they point at us – or perhaps precisely because of them. It is to their own detriment that they cannot accept our presence in our homeland, because our humanity remains intact and our art is beautiful and life-affirming, and we aren’t going anywhere but home.

The result, as Anziska notes was that at Camp David Sadat got the Sinai and Begin got the West Bank. And with Israel’s southern border secured, Begin was free to attempt to “wipe out” the PLO in Lebanon.

erview by Kieran YatesThe Palestinian rapper on the power of Ramallah’s dance culture documented in a new film, Palestine Underground

(...) Muqata’a is locally known as the “godfather” of the underground hip-hop scene in Ramallah, a city in the West Bank, Palestine. A former member of the acclaimed collective Ramallah Underground, he plies a brand of experimental hip-hop – based on sampling and looping the sounds of his city – that has been heralded for influencing a new generation of Palestinian musicians. His family are Palestinian refugees who moved between Nicosia, Cyprus and Amman, Jordan, and eventually came back to Ramallah. Muqata’a features in a new documentary, Palestine Underground, which follows members of the growing subterranean dance culture as they put on DIY parties across the region. It’s released online on 30 October via Boiler Room.

“Muqata’a” means to disrupt, or boycott. How does your music reflect that?I sample classical Arabic music in my records. When our land is being taken away, our culture is muted. So it’s a way to try and disrupt that – being a glitch in the system is very important. When your heritage is being attacked by the state, you have to find ways of being remembered, so I sample a lot. A lot of the Arabic music or old records in my grandparents’ homes in Jaffa and Safed, for example, were taken when their house was confiscated. So this is a way to bring those sounds back. I have to find a lot of these vinyls abroad now – the UK, France or Greece. If I’m very lucky I might see them in a second-hand shop here, but it’s rare. One of my current favourites is Al Henna by Layla Nathmi.

RAMALLAH (Ma’an) — The Palestinian Cabinet, headed by Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, reviewed, during its weekly meeting on Wednesday, the latest Human Rights Watch (HRW) report, regarding the situation of human rights in Palestine, and vowed to investigate its findings and recommendations in cooperation with all related parties and authorities.

In a statement issued following the meeting, the cabinet approved the formation of a ministerial committee to lead discussions related to the Social Security Law, welcomed the visit of the Chinese Vice-President and the meetings of the joint Palestinian-Turkish ministerial committee.

During the meeting, Hamdallah stated that “The State of Palestine, the democratic state, the state of law and institution-building, and the responsible member in the international community, is committed to its obligations and is making great efforts to comply with the standards of international human rights.”

“The State of Palestine positively considers that the law enforcement agencies within the State must respect and protect human rights, in accordance with our beliefs in the value of human beings and our responsibility for preserving the human dignity.” (...)

The Palestinian Ministry of Interior and National Security accused Human Rights Watch of ignoring the reality and facts about the situation of freedoms in the Gaza Strip.

“With great concern, we followed up the report issued by Human Rights Watch (HRW) on October 23, 2018, that included allegations against the Security Forces in the Gaza Strip accusing them of repressing dissent,” the ministry said.

The ministry stressed that the HRW’s report “lacks accuracy and objectivity and does not reflect reality” in the Gaza Strip.

In a statement, the ministry said that the it had “received some inquiries” from HRW “on issues related to freedoms in the Gaza Strip,” stating that the organisation “asked about certain persons who were being allegedly arrested in the Gaza Strip.”

The ministry “clarified and elaborated all issues, explaining the grounds of all the cases in question,” stating that it was “shocked” because the organisation “ignored our explanations”.

Meanwhile, the ministry said that it sent another message to the organisation on 22 October asking why its reply was ignored, but it received no response.

The ministry reiterated that it maintains continuous contact with the different human rights groups, including the International Committee for the Red Cross and visit its jails and meet those held in custody.

“We do protect the Palestinian citizens and implement the Basic Palestinian law in terms of freedom of expression and prisoners’ rights,” the ministry added.

The Israeli Authorities renewed, Sunday, the arbitrary Administrative Detention orders against Palestinian legislator, Khaleda Jarrar , for three more months, for the fourth consecutive time.

The Palestinian Ministry of Women’s Affairs issued a statement strongly denouncing the continued imprisonment of Jarrar, holding her captive under arbitrary orders without charges or trial.

The Ministry said that “Israel continues to violate the basic principles of International Law, and all related human rights resolutions,” and condemned the ongoing abduction and imprisonment of many elected legislators, and political leaders.

It also denounced the escalating violations targeting the detained women and children in occupied Palestine, and called on the International Community to intervene and expose the Israeli crimes.(...)

U.S. student Lara Alqasem will be allowed to enter Israel after the Supreme Court accepted on Thursday her appeal against the decision to prevent her entry. Alqasem, whom the state claimed was a BDS activist, was held over two weeks in a detainment center at Ben-Gurion International Airport despite receiving a student visa from an Israeli consulate prior to her arrival.

Alqasem, 22, was detained at Ben-Gurion Airport upon her arrival on October 2 after she was flagged as a BDS activist. Alqasem, who has a student visa and is enrolled in a master’s program in human rights at the Hebrew University, has been detained ever since.

“I’m relieved at the court’s decision and incredibly grateful for the work of my amazing and tireless lawyers Yotam Ben Hillel and Leora Bechor as well as the support of my family and friends. I will be happy to say more when I’ve had a chance to rest and process,” Alqasem told Haaretz following her release.

“Since the appellant’s actions do not raise satisfactory cause to bar her to entry to Israel, the inevitable impression is that invalidating the visa given to her was due to the political opinions she holds,” read the verdict. “If this is truly the case, then we are talking about an extreme and dangerous step, which could lead to the crumbling of the pillars upon which democracy in Israel stands,” the verdict continued.

“The Law of Entry to Israel is intended to protect the state’s sovereignty, and the public’s safety and security. It does not have a component of penalty, or revenge for previous bad behavior,” Justice Neal Hendel said.

“Despite the obstacles in her way the appellant insists on her right to study at the Hebrew University. This conduct is not in keeping, in an understatement, with the thesis that the she’s an undercover boycott activist,” he continued.

“The Interior Ministry has openly admitted that it does not have any evidence of the appellant’s engaging in boycott activity since April 2017, except for mysterious ’indications’ whose essence hasn’t been clarified and regarding which no evidence has been submitted,” Neal noted.

“The material submitted regarding the appellant’s activity in the SJP organization shows that even at that stage the boycott activity was minor and limited in character,” Neal added. “There’s no doubt the SJP cell indeed supported boycotting Israel – and this position must be roundly condemned. It is also presumable that the appellant, who played a role in the cell and for three years was one of its few members, was partner to this unworthy activity. However, it is impossible to ignore the cell’s sporadic and relatively minor character. In itself, it certainly was not one of the prominent boycott organizations and it is doubtful whether the appellant could be seen as filling the criteria [required in the law?] even when she had a position in it.”

Neal continued, saying that “alongside the random indications of the appellant’s involvement in BDS activity during her studies, it is impossible to ignore the testimonies of her lecturers about her complex approach, the curiosity she displayed toward Israel and Judaism and her readiness to conduct an open, respectful dialogue – which is in stark contrast to the boycott idea.”

“The struggle against the BDS movement and others like it is a worthy cause. The state is permitted, not to say obliged, to protect itself from discrimination and the violent silencing of the political discourse. It may take steps against the boycott organizations and their activists. In this case, preventing the appellant’s entry does not advance the law’s purpose and clearly deviates from the bounds of reasonability,” Neal concluded.

Justice Anat Baron said that “there was no place to deny the appellant the entry visa she had been granted, because clearly she doesn’t now and hasn’t for a long time engaged in boycotting Israel, not to mention engaging in ’active, continuing and substantial’ work in this matter. The decision to deny the appellant’s entry visa is unreasonable to the extent that it requires intervention.”

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days into the strike, the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more.The police insisted that they shot in self- defense. Miners Shot Down tells a different story, one that unfolds in real time over seven days, like a ticking time bomb.

The film weaves together the central point-of-view of three strike leaders, Mambush, Tholakele and Mzoxolo, with compelling police footage, TV archive and interviews with lawyers representing the miners in the ensuing commission of inquiry into the massacre. What emerges is a tragedy that arises out of the deep fault lines in South Africa’s nascent democracy, of enduring poverty and a twenty year old, unfulfilled promise of a better life for all. A campaigning film, beautifully shot, sensitively told, with a haunting soundtrack, Miners Shot Down reveals how far the African National Congress has strayed from its progressive liberationist roots and leaves audiences with an uncomfortable view of those that profit from minerals in the global South.

In an age in which most maps are produced through satellites and computer generated algorithms, cartography is often viewed as an objective discipline that has overcome the political biases of its past. The case of Palestine, however, serves as a powerful reminder that modern maps remain a long way from objective and often, in fact, actively perpetuating colonialist practices.

Netanyahu refers to his doctrine as “outside in:” first you pacify the outside and ally with the Sunni Arab states outside of Israel, then, in exchange, you extract a peace plan out of them that you then impose inside on a Palestine now devoid of allies. You pacify the Sunni states by supporting them militarily and by providing them political cover generally, and by supporting them, specifically, in their opposition to Iran. You then crush Palestine and leave it helpless to hold out against a peace plan forced on them by Trump and supported by a bought off Arab world who has abandoned them.

The two Sunni Arab states that have to be bought and pacified are Saudi Arabia and Egypt. How do you subdue them? Join them in their confrontation with Iran and provide them with military and diplomatic support.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEOctober 8, 2018Contact: Sonya E Meyerson-Knox | sonya@jvp.org | 929-290-0317Jewish Voice for Peace has been fighting Canary Mission since 2015, when the site first appeared.

Thanks to intrepid reporting in The Forward, The Jewish Community Federation of San Francisco (JCF) has promised to stop funding Canary Mission in the future, following the exposure of a $100,000 contribution by one of its donor groups.

The Canary Mission website, which maintains a blacklist of people who defend Palestinian human rights, has bullied and slandered thousands of students and professors, making egregious claims based on very little fact. Canary Mission has threatened the careers and reputations of those listed, and tries to intimidate and dissuade people from speaking out for Palestinian rights.

Canary Mission particularly targets Arab and Muslim students, pulling on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim tropes. For Palestinian students, inclusion on the blacklist can prevent them from visiting their families. Indeed, it was recently confirmed that the State of Israel is using this slanderous and unverified blacklist as a tool in determining who can enter Israel, and that the FBI was using Canary Mission as a basis for questioning students of color in the U.S.

With the majority of Canary Mission’s donors remaining anonymous, all Jewish institutions should immediately confirm they will cease any funding to the cyber-bullying blacklist.

Moreover, it is not enough to pledge to abstain from funding Canary Mission in the future. Indeed, the JCF should issue a public apology, and clarify the steps it will take towards restitution and repair.

Many American Jewish philanthropic institutions grant money to causes far outside their mandate of support for the Jewish community; The Jewish United Fund of Metro Chicago funds anti-Muslim hate groups, for example. We urge members of the American Jewish community to contact your local Jewish institutions to ensure they are not funding hate groups or racist organizations.

Canary Mission is a form of online harassment, and like all cyberbullying, it has real world consequences for the victims. It must be shutdown – and it will be, once it has lost its funders.

Official Documents Prove: Israel Bans Young Americans Based on Canary Mission WebsiteIn Funding Canary Mission, Jewish Federation Betrayed UsFollowing Forward Report, Federation Says It Will No Longer Fund Canary MissionREVEALED: Canary Mission Blacklist Is Secretly Bankrolled By Major Jewish FederationHow Israel Spies on US CitizensMeet the Owner of Canary Mission’s Anonymous Anti-Palestinian Blacklisting WebsiteA New Wave Of Hardline Anti-BDS Tactics Are Targeting Students, And No One Knows Who’s Behind ItThe FBI is using unvetted, right-wing blacklists to question activists about their support for PalestineCanary Mission’s Threat Grows, From U.S. Campuses To The Israeli BorderBanned From Israel: A Q&A With Law Professor Katherine FrankeJewish students: A blacklist of BDS supporters is hurting our efforts to defend Israel on campusCountering a Blacklist: Introducing ‘Against Canary Mission’###

Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.

The Palestinians recently protesting in the Gaza Strip called their demonstration “The Great Return March”—that’s a reference to a desire to return to the land from which they were expelled in 1948. Of the 1.9 million Palestinians living in Gaza, 70 percent came from villages in the surrounding area and beyond, in what is now Israel, 70 years ago this month.

During the founding of the state, the Israeli military destroyed more than 500 Palestinian villages; some were completely abandoned, while others became the foundation for Jewish villages and towns. Some villages survived. A new open-source mapping project, Palestine Open Maps, allows users to see the Palestinian landscape as it looked before 1948—and to search for villages and towns from that era to find out whether they remain, were depopulated, or were built over.

A happy #WorldTeachersDay to all Palestinians teachers in Palestine and in refugee camps in neighboring countries.Israel perpetually bombs #Palestinians schools leaving learning and teaching virtually impossible but Palestinian have among the lowest illiteracy rates in the world

Some Americans detained upon arrival in Israel reported being questioned about their political activity based on ’profiles’ on the controversial website Canary Mission. Documents obtained by Haaretz now clearly show that is indeed a source of information for decisions to bar entry

The Strategic Affairs and Public Diplomacy Ministry is using simple Google searches, mainly the controversial American right-wing website Canary Mission, to bar political activists from entering Israel, according to documents obtained by Haaretz.>>Israeli court rejects American visa-holding student’s appeal; to be deported for backing BDSThe internal documents, some of which were submitted to the appeals tribunal in the appeal against the deportation of American student Lara Alqasem, show that officials briefly interviewed Alqasem, 22, at Ben-Gurion International Airport on her arrival Tuesday night, then passed her name on for “continued handling” by the ministry because of “suspicion of boycott activity.” Israel recently passed a law banning the entry of foreign nationals who engage in such activity.

>> Are you next? Know your rights if detained at Israel’s border

Links to Canary Mission and Facebook posts are seen on an official Ministry of Strategic Affairs document.The ministry then sent the officials at the airport an official report classified “sensitive” about Alqasem’s supposed political activities, which included information from five links – four from Facebook and one, the main source, from the Canary Mission site, which follows pro-Palestinian activists on U.S. campuses.Keep updated: Sign up to our newsletterEmail* Sign up

A decision on Alqasem’s appeal against her deportation was expected Thursday afternoon.Canary Mission, now the subject of major controversy in the American Jewish community, has been collecting information since 2015 about BDS activists at universities, and sends the information to potential employers. Pro-Israel students have also criticized their activities.

Lara Alqasem.This week, the American Jewish news site The Forward reported that at least $100,000 of Canary Mission’s budget had been contributed through the San Francisco Jewish Federation and the Helen Diller Family Foundation, which donates to Jewish education. The donation was handed to a group registered in Beit Shemesh called Megamot Shalom, specifically stating that it was for Canary Mission. A few hours after the report was published, the federation announced that it would no longer fund the group.Over the past few months some of the Americans who have been detained for questioning upon arrival in Israel have reported that they were questioned about their political activity based on “profiles” about them published on Canary Mission. The documents obtained by Haaretz now show clearly that the site is indeed the No. 1 source of information for the decision to bar entry to Alqasem.According to the links that were the basis for the decision to suspend the student visa that Alqasem had been granted by the Israeli Consulate in Miami, she was president of the Florida chapter of a group called Students for Justice in Palestine, information quoted directly from the Canary Mission. The national arm of that organization, National Students for Justice in Palestine, is indeed on the list of 20 groups that the Strategic Affairs Ministry compiled as criteria to invoke the anti-boycott law. However, Alqasem was not a member at the national level, but rather a local activist. She told the appeals tribunal that the local chapter had only a few members.

Canary Mission’s profile of Lara Alqasem.The ministry also cited as a reason for barring Alqasem’s entry to Israel a Facebook post showing that “In April 2016 [her] chapter conducted an ongoing campaign calling for the boycott of Sabra hummus, the American version of Hummus Tzabar, because Strauss, which owns Tzabar, funds the Golani Brigade.” Alqasem told the tribunal that she had not taken an active part in this campaign. Another link was about a writers’ petition calling on a cultural center to refuse sponsorship by Israel for its activities. Yet another post, by the local Students for Justice in Palestine, praised the fact that an international security company had stopped operations in Israel. None of these links quoted Alqasem.She told the tribunal that she is not currently a member of any pro-boycott group and would not come to study for her M.A. in Israel if she were.The Strategic Affairs Ministry report on Alqasem is so meager that its writers mentioned it themselves: “It should be noted that in this case we rely on a relatively small number of sources found on the Internet.” Over the past few months Haaretz has been following up reports of this nature that have been the basis for denying entry to activists, and found that in many other cases the material consisted of superficial Google searches and that the ministry, by admission of its own senior officials, does not collect information from non-public sources.skip - Facebook post calling for the boycott of Sabra hummus

The ministry’s criteria for invoking the anti-boycott law state clearly that in order to bar entry to political activists, they must “hold senior or significant positions in the organizations,” including “official senior roles in prominent groups (such as board members).”But the report on Alqasem does not indicate that she met the criterion of “senior” official in the national movement, nor was this the case for other young people questioned recently at the airport. In some cases it was the Shin Bet security service that questioned people due to past participation in activities such as demonstrations in the territories, and not BDS activities.“Key activists,” according to the ministry’s criteria, also means people who “consistently take part in promoting BDS in the framework of prominent delegitimization groups or independently, and not, for example, an activist who comes as part of a delegation.” In Alqasem’s case, however, her visa was issued after she was accepted for study at Hebrew University.

Singer and songwriter since 1997 with Positive Radical Sound (PRS), Khalifa believes music can be more than making tunes and performing. Releasing four albums with PRS, two with Sly & Robbie as well as numerous songs featuring Mad Professor, Tiken Jah Fakoly, Sly & Robbie, Taxi Gang, Sugar Minott, Nambo Robinson, Steven Marley Wright and Paul Groucho Smykle, Khalifa is also involved in teaching music in detention centers in France, in refugee camps in Palestine or in youth clubs in Oran, Algeria.

“Music should help educate while exploring the depths of the Soul”. This is what Khalifa has learned to do.

Khalifa gets his energy from the sources of reggae music to take us beyond frontiers as shown in his last single ‘There’s a Light’ which music video was shot in Camden, London, or in his cover of French classic ‘Chanson pour l’auvergnat’ by George Brassens, North African style! For nearly 17 years Khalifa keeps producing music and writing songs, inspired by his travels and by everyday life, and backed by a powerful rhythm. A must-see performance!

For his album, ‘Hard Times for Dreamers’, Khalifa rounded up an international crew, bringing in Mad Professor, Winston Mac Anuff, Nambo Robinson, Sly and Robbie et Steven Marley Wright (I Jah Man) to put together 12 powerful, tight songs. Each tune has its subtlety; the punchy brass section gives way to the strings, and a 50s guitar trill weaves in and out of a raw afro-beat. Robbie Shakespeare’s bassline smoothly glides us from Lagos to the Kingston suburbs, while Khalif’s masterful voice takes the lead.

Sitting in the back seat, the blue-blooded Swedish aristocrat and the decorated French hero of two world wars had begun to relax from the tension of the journey as the big Chrysler, the last of a three-car convoy, started its final ascent up the narrow road through the now Jewish-occupied district of Katamon, towards Rehavia and the house of the Jerusalem military governor. No one in the first car, a DeSoto, least of all the Israeli captain assigned to escort the VIPs, showed much concern when a new-looking Israeli army jeep slewed across the road to bring the convoy to a halt: just another temporary checkpoint. As three soldiers in standard Israel Defence Forces khaki shorts, fingers on triggers, approached the DeSoto; the three young Swedes and a Belgian in the passenger seats, groped for their papers. “It’s OK boys,” the Israeli officer explained. “Let us pass. It’s the UN mediator.”

At that moment, one of the three men ran to the Chrysler, pushed the barrel of his German-made Schmeisser MP40 sub-machine gun through the open rear window, and pumped six bullets into the chest, throat and left arm of the aristocrat and another 18 into the body of the French colonel sitting on his left. Rushing out of the first car, the Israeli captain, Moshe Hillman, ran back to the Chrysler. Aghast at the sight of the copiously bleeding bodies he kept repeating: “My God, oh my God,” before jumping in beside the driver, a UN security man recruited from the FBI, and telling him to head straight for the Hadassah hospital. But Count Folke Bernadotte, the UN mediator officially charged with bringing peace to a Holy Land at war, and his chief UN observer Colonel Andre Serot, who had only swapped places with Hillman at the last minute so that he could personally thank the count for saving his wife from a Nazi concentration camp three years earlier, were dead on arrival.

The assassination of Bernadotte by Jewish militants disguised as regular soldiers on 17 September 1948, was commemorated in a series of Swedish and UN ceremonies in Jerusalem, Stockholm and New York yesterday. But no blue Israeli plaque marks the spot, as it does for so many military and Jewish underground exploits of the period. (...)

BETHLEHEM (Ma’an) — Spain has become the latest country to voice its readiness to recognize the State of Palestine and that it will promote a European Union (EU) move to recognize Palestine as an independent state.

Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, spoke at a conference of EU leaders in Austria, saying that the Spanish government will promote an EU move to recognize Palestine.

Borrell said that “if the EU is not able to reach a unanimous decision, then each to their own.”

He added that if the move fails, the Spanish government will consider a Spain-only recognition, noting that “the last option of individual recognition of Palestine is on the table.”

Borrell confirmed that he will initiate an “intensive” consultation process to set a timetable for achieving a common position on the given subject, as EU policy is unclear concerning unilateral recognition.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) said that there are 139 countries that have recognized Palestine.